flux

Yep

When me and my younger brother were little, we were outside playing and digging in the snow with an old claw hammer from the barn. It must have been shortly after watching the classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

I got the bright idea to tell him to stick the claw of the hammer in the snow, then pull it out and lick it, just like Yukon Cornelius does, and maybe we could find gold.

Needless to say, tongue + ice cold metal hammer were quite the match and he was stuck instantly. Being as little as we were he panicked and ripped it off, along with a large thick chunk of tongue skin. Quite a bit of red snow that day...

I remember getting in trouble for that one. My parents definitely thought I tricked him on purpose, but I couldn't have been more than 8 or so and definitely did not. I also remember that hammer sitting outside for the rest of the winter, with a chunk of tongue still frozen to it.

Wait, are you saying you didn't have to actively think about which is right or left before? I've always had to think about it, only for a second, but it's definitely an active thought thing for me.

Revolt.chat is quite similar to discord and open source. They do run a centralized server to make it easy for everyone to get onboard, but it can be self hosted as well.

That being said, I still don't use it because nobody else does, and that's the problem with all chat and social media apps.

Baldur's Gate

Yeah, definitely. I didn't know people didn't have to think about it for a second.

Stop trying to make 'fetch' happen! it's not going to happen!

Lastname-Server

I know, I'm boring. But at least my laptop and desktop have cool names:

Firstname-Laptop

Firstname-Desktop

Drinking

Why would anyone want to drink something that tastes awful, so they can have a night of fun they probably won't remember, and wake up feeling awful?

If I'm gonna have a fun night, I want to remember it, not hear about it from others. And the risks are too great. Risk of doing something stupid I would never normally consider that could embarrass, injure, or kill myself or others.

If that's your idea of fun, more power to you, but I'll pass.

/thread

YOU MUST GATHER YOUR PARTY BEFORE VENTURING FORTH!

I never get sleep paralysis in bed at night. It only ever happens if I doze off during the day, usually somewhere unusual like at work.

I had a boring job for many years where I just had to be in the store, and sometimes it was very slow. I would doze off in my chair, knowing it was a slow day and we had a door buzzer to alert us anyway if someone came in.

When I would fall asleep like that, my subconscious worry of someone coming in and catching me asleep would kick in and I would dream that I heard the door buzzer. In the dream I would try to get up and be ready, but completely unable to move. Sometimes I would dream a customer coming, or hearing the phone ring. And every time I would fight to open my eyes.

While having this struggle I would realize that not only could I not open my eyes, but I couldn't even move my body or breathe. So then I would start trying really hard to do one of those, sometimes fighting to lift my arm, or turn my head, or just struggling to breathe.

It always seemed like an eternity of struggling to snap out of it. And eventually I would wake up, sometimes hyperventilating because I was trying so hard to breathe but was actually doing it just fine without knowing. It also seemed as though I could see my surroundings, but I'm not sure if my eyes were open or that was part of the dream.

But every time I woke up like that, there was no customer in the store, no missed calls on the phone or anything. I had dreamed the part that woke me up, but with no other recollection of any other dream besides being there in the store.

Sometimes, when I heard the door buzzer, I would wake up just fine and deal with whoever came in. Eventually I realized that the actual door buzzer would wake me instantly with no problem, but the one I dreamed never did.

I don't really have these episodes anymore since leaving that job and no longer having the opportunity to doze off during the day. But every now and then it happens if I take a nap on the couch or someplace else during the day. I think it's my subconscious trying to stay alert to things around me when napping at odd times with the potential to be interrupted.

I mean, it's a split second, but yeah, I gotta think about it. I don't think there would be noticeable lag, but it's definitely a conscious thought. I just thought everyone had to have the thought go through their head, it's not just like an instinct or anything.

the developer's an ass

Deep space radar telemetry

It's great at coming up with ideas for magic items, monsters, traps, plot hooks, etc.

I ran a Christmas session last year, it was a dream session so I handed out tons of magic items cause they wouldn't be keeping them. ChatGPT generated every single one, and I didn't tweak anything at all. Which made for a few interesting items with redundant or contradictory stats, but that was explained by it being a dream.

I have used it many times to give ideas for new items, new monsters, etc. Recently I was creating a blood-themed dungeon and asked for monster ideas and it gave me an Animated Bloodpuddle (reflavored Gelatinous Cube with extra abilities), and a Hemogoblin (ravenous blood thirsty goblins). There were others but those ones stuck out as cool and ended up being quite fun for the party.

I think a better analogy would be paying for an all you can eat buffet, but every time you go up for a plate, Google shovels some of whatever they want onto it.

Oh sure, they try to guess what you might like by tracking your eating habits every time you visit the restaurant, but they still keep putting crap you don't want on your plate that gets in the way of what you do want.

Oh, and also, some all you can eat buffets have a plate limit, after so many plates, you can only get a spoonful per trip. And Google still crams on stuff you don't want.

We allow a marmot to predict our weather.

Is there a way to temporarily disable tracking for circumstances such as this when you loan your keys or something?

I suppose not, or people would disable it and then re-enable it later, unless they require proximity or some other protection against that.

I understand

Bench grinder, sledgehammer, and thermite all work on phones too!

The Prometheus may have been ugly, but it was my favorite because it was Earth's first. It was kinda janky and totally experimental, but it was absolutely a necessary step in our advancement of science enabling better and cooler ships like Daedalus. It was usually outgunned and outsized by everything it went up against, but still managed to leave a mark. It saved the day in the battle of Antarctica enabling the discovery of Atlantis.

Do I think it was a better ship? Of course not, it was totally inferior (and ugly). But it made for a better story. For a good portion of the show it was all we had and it was barely enough, but it became more of a character than a tool. The moment the Prometheus was blasted in half was just as serious as any character death (and not just because of Pendergast). It was a huge blow to us and let the viewers know the Ori were a real threat.

Same here. I've never had a reason to switch away.

Yep. I've been using Obsidian/Syncthing for about 2 years now. It has been 100% flawless for me. Changes sync across devices within seconds.

I'm either going to be a badass or a dumbass.

I have mine hosted on elest.io. As easy as it gets. Just choose your software enter some initial domain setup and deploy. Can't beat it for 18 bucks a month.

Everything is better flat

Alrewdy can. At least through Home Assistant, can even be set as your default assistant on Android through the HA companion app

I just integrated it into Home Assistant last week and it can now control my lights and tell me temperature in different rooms and interact with any smart devices in my home, in addition to everything regular ChatGPT can do. I also integrated elevenlabs voice so it sounds like a posh British gentleman. Then I named him Jarvis of course.

It's been pretty entertaining, but more of a gimmick than truly useful.

But if AI learns from us...

I have a total of 48 TB across 4 HDD, plus the system SSD on my old desktop, now just server. It's unfortunately running windows, because I haven't had the time to reinstall everything from scratch yet even though I've intended to for years.

Anyway, I just run Backblaze for backup on it, except one drive which is important photos/files and that gets an extra backup to a RPi using Syncthing. The other drives are all downloaded media that could be replaced given enough time, but Backblaze backs up my whole PC and hasn't complained about the size yet. I thought for sure they'd cut me off or something, but nope still just paying $99/year for a single PC backup.

Westley?

You have 20 seconds to comply.

Forgot about the phone, you'll never guess what I call that one...

When you have a lot of devices like my family, it just makes everything easier to give descriptive names like that.